The residential real estate market is beginning to show real signs of life.

Home values have posted their first annual increase in nearly five years, acccording to the latest Zillow index, which is a well-respected year-over-year analysis of the sale of similar homes in the same area.

So we may be getting closer to a healthier housing market for the first time since the bubble burst in 2008.

On the surface, Libor might appear to solely be a Wall Street problem.

There is no easy target for the populace to vilify, as there is with the HSBC money laundering investigation. And the damage done by the banks’ apparent attempts to subjugate Libor to their own benefit, at first glance, might appear to be limited to the banks themselves.

Perhaps that is why outrage over Libor hasn’t yet reached critical mass. But make no mistake; the impact of the scandal could be larger than any of the banking scandals that have come before it.

This is very much a Main Street issue. As the investigation continues, we may learn how homeowners were burdened with distorted mortgage rates.

The law will also impose a singular point of contact for homeowners to deal with at their lender.

And of course it requires banks to prove that they have the legal right to foreclose and preserves the right for homeowners to take legal action when they don’t.

On one level it seems so preposterous that such rules would be needed, but we let the fox guard the henhouse for far too long, hence the reason we had a foreclosure crisis in the first place!

Those things that should be obvious are no longer just violations of common law (and common sense) but are finally being codified as violations of statutory law.

The reality is what you are seeing in California is an absolute necessity and they are not the only ones. Nevada actually passed similar rules last year. New York’s State Assembly just passed a bill that would criminalize robosigning, although sadly the Senate did not vote on the legislation this year. Continue reading→

It has not received the same amount of press as the servicing settlement that the attorneys general agreed to, but this Independent Foreclosure Review is also supposed to rectify the ‘errors’ committed by servicers, if you were in foreclosure between 2009 and 2010.

Any homeowner is eligible to apply for the review process, which bank regulators have promised will be free from the banks’ grips, despite the fact that the banks are PAYING the consultants who are performing the reviews.

That’s Strike One.

And of course the regulators, not the banks, are still referring to fraud as an ‘error.” Yet another undersell of the banks’ illegal activities. Strike Two.

Oh and there is no appeal process if the consultants rule against you. Strike Three.

Last week the Officer of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve, the two agencies behind this program, announced an extension for homeowners who want to file for one of these so-called independent reviews, and for the first time laid out the specifics of the ‘errors’ done by the banks and penalties and what type of ‘errors’ these penalties would cover.Continue reading→

I’ve seen a number of bailouts which have been structured to save the banks, the bankers, and their bondholders. But never the average Joe.

But the truth is everyone, from the government to the private sector, relies on the consumer to keep the economy going. Saving the banks has so far done nothing to get us out of the economic doldrums.

So your effort to put a few hundred extra dollars in homeowners pockets is certainly a step in the right direction. I sincerely hope this isn’t an election year ploy and a true effort to rev up the U.S.’s economic engine. But you’ve got a long way to go to convince me and the American public that you are serious.

We’ve all heard the speeches, from you and countless other politicians. But what we need now is action.

Continue your focus on the underwater homeowners who are as you like to call them, ‘responsible’. In our efforts to save the ones who have fallen behind, it seems the vast majority of them (9 out of every 10 underwater homeowners are still paying their mortgages) have been forgotten and left out in the cold. You need to do more, much more.Continue reading→